The Meta

I’m jumping out of the business and marketing bag for just a moment to talk about sports and something that has been frosting my ass for awhile. Since I live in Kentucky, I hear this garbage all the time about Tubby Smith and wanted to share some facts to question both sides of UK fans’ arguments about their former coach. Here’s an e-mail I sent to one of the local radio sports talk show hosts (Lachlan McLean) in hopes that he shares this on the air. ————————————-

First off, let me state for the record that I’m a HUGE Louisville fan and loathe the Cayuts.With that said, I’m worn out by the UK contingent whining about Tubby Smith not being able to recruit and/or coach.Which one is it?Far be it from me to defend a former UK guy, but here are a couple of arguments to consider.

If somebody says he can’t recruit, how did he produce 9 NBA players in 10 years?We’re talking NBA—not NBDL, overseas, or any minor league pro basketball.In six plus years of Rick being here at UofL, we have ONE player in the NBA (Francisco Garcia).Here’s Tubby’s list of NBA players for good measure so no one can question the number:

Tayshawn Prince

Keith Bogans

Gerald Fitch

Erik Daniels

Chuck Hayes

Kelenna Azubuike

Rajon Rondo

Randolph Morris

Jamaal Magloire

Of that bunch, the most heralded players were Rondo and Morris—the rest were not super sought after.So that begs the question—is it recruiting or coaching?One could easily argue, with 9 NBA players in 10 years, it was not recruiting.

If it’s coaching, how did Tubby guide them to 1 NCAA title, 3 Elite 8 and 2 Sweet 16 appearances?He never lost a first round game at UK.In the span Tubby was coach at UK, he won 76.0% of his games.The all-time percentage for UK Basketball is (drum-roll please) . . .76.3%!Compare his winning percentage at UK to that of (mouse face) Mike Kryzewski’s at Duke (77.8%), and he’s not that far off (1.8%).If Kryzewski is considered one of the best college coaches, where does that leave Tubby? What that means, with all things being equal, Kryzewski would win a whopping one extra game in every 55 played based on those numbers.You don’t have to be a genius to realize that’s not very significant.

Rupp won 82.2% of his games at UK (which equates to winning 1 more game in every 16 than Tubby)

Joe B Hall–74.8%

Eddie Sutton—69.2%

Rick Pitino—81.9% (which equates to winning 1 more game in every 17)

So looking objectively at UK basketball historically illustrates the point that Tubby’s performance was very much in line with the tradition at UK.This notion that Tubby “underperformed” emphasizes how unrealistic UK fans truly are. When placing these facts into their proper context (remember: it’s a UofL fan analyzing them objectively), it makes you wonder what is in UK fans’ cool-aid to make them believe they deserve so much more.Look at the numbers before making the argument that Tubby can’t recruit or coach, and it’s pretty clear neither of those are valid points.

The reason for sending this e-mail and asking these questions is I am sick and tired of hearing UK fans whine, belly-ache, and complain about how terrible things were under Tubby.Ok, the style wasn’t the most enjoyable, but who cares?You won games at an extremely similar clip to what you have all-time so quit whining already!

It’s not my nature to contribute to anything UK related, but the facts tell a far different story than UK fans would like everyone to believe, and it’s time for them to own up to those facts.

With nearly 150 million domain name websites registered (source: NetCraft) and a phenomenon known as the Google Sandbox, where new sites are placed into a moratorium of sorts until they have proven to be legitimate sites, getting a new site to quickly appear within search engine results is an enormous challenge all webmasters and site owners face when launching a new site.According to Nielsen Netratings, there were approximately 8 billion search queries performed in the month of October 2007 which means search engines are a popular tool to discover websites.Based on the total US population of 303.5 million (US Census), that equates to 26 searches for every single person in the US in October alone.

Leading organic search engine optimization firms suggest that it can take anywhere from three to six months to achieve a top 30 ranking in the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN dependent on the competitive online search landscape.Additional statistics from NetCraft indicate there have been over 40 million new sites in 2007 so the search ranking challenge is becoming greater and greater each month.

Recently, I developed a new site (http://radio.smbconsultinginc.com) dedicated to my marketing internet radio show as a sub-domain off of our main company site (http://smbconsultinginc.com).The site went live on Sunday, December 2, 2007 and was indexed by Google and Yahoo within five days.Furthermore, the site ranked within the top 20 search results for “marketing radio show” according to Google (#9) and Yahoo (#16) on December 7, 2007.Taking into consideration the number of competing pages within Google (5.48 million) and Yahoo (112 million) for that particular phrase, this is an accomplishment that many webmasters and site owners would like to duplicate so let’s take a look at how it was achieved.

Special attention was paid to the title and description tags for each page of the site with the main page getting the lion’s share of keyword focus.The keyword tag wasn’t even utilized for this site as a test to verify its dwindling importance to search engines.

A link to the new site was placed on our main established website homepage which gets indexed regularly by all crawler based search engines.

Placing strategic comments on very popular and heavily linked to blogs improved the odds of the site being indexed and created a little awareness.

Signing up for a directory submission service that submitted the site to nearly 500 online directories for around $100 saved tremendous time.This ploy was implemented to speed up the indexing process while also creating permanent links back to the site which focus on targeted keyword phrases.

A sitemap was created next and submitted directly to Google in order to improve the odds of getting more pages indexed once their crawler discovered the new site through one of the strategically placed links from any number of sites targeted in the first few steps.

Since the site’s true purpose is to focus attention on the great guests featured on the show, an e-mail was sent to each guest to alert them of the site and encourage them to promote their own individual page in any way they deemed appropriate.

The content generated for the site will lend itself well to naturally attracting links as time goes on which will further improve the site’s rankings for various keyword phrases.

Now that the site ranks well for a few keyword phrases within the search engines’ organic rankings, show popularity and guest awareness will increase which help all parties involved better attract their desired target audience which is one of the key values of organic search engine optimization.

The next time you produce a new website and want to improve the odds of your site getting indexed quickly, follow the steps outlined above and hopefully your site will rank well in the process.

Over the weekend, I cranked out a new site dedicated to the radio show. On the site, you can get background information on each guest including scoping out what they look like, download a podcast of the show, ask questions, or provide feedback.

This Thursday, Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz.org, will be my guest on the Bauer Pauer Hauer.

As most of you already know, search engine optimization is one of the hottest marketing techniques out there today. Whereas old school advertising and interruptive marketing methodologies blast out a message in hopes that someone receives it and eventually takes action, SEO helps you strategically go where you anticipate your desired target audience to be in order to market to them in a fashion that suits THEM best.

Wouldn’t it be neat if we could dictate when and how we wanted to be marketed to? Well, SEO is one way to achieve that.

Obviously since my firm helps clients achieve higher rankings in Google, Yahoo, and MSN via search engine optimization, having today’s guest on the show is quite an honor since he is one of the “rock stars” of this particular industry.

Rand Fishkin is founder and CEO of SEOmoz.org, a search engine optimization organization and online community which is a Seattle-based SEO company that serves as a hub for search marketers worldwide, providing education, tools, resources and paid services.

SEOmoz’s vast community comprises more than 30,000 registered users interested in the search marketing field.

I hope you’ll join Rand and me this Thursday at 2 PM ET for another edition of “The Bauer Pauer Hauer” on VoiceAmerica.com.

Thanks to Debbie Allen‘s “shameless promotion” on my radio show last Thursday, I’ve had the privilege to attend her “Maximizing Success” seminar in Sedona, Arizona this weekend. The seminar runs three days (Friday-Sunday, November 9-11), but I’m leaving after Saturday’s session to return home to attend to some loose business ends.

First off, Arizona, as a whole, is beautiful! I had a trip out here slated to happen next year, but I guess the law of attraction is working its magic already. Those that know me fairly well know that I intend to live out here someday down the road. That or have a winter home in Scottsdale.

Anyway, here’s a recap of the first day of the seminar and some of the topics covered.

The seminar kicked off Friday morning with Dave Dee talking about “how to keep your phone ringing off the hook with hot leads.” The main crux of his story centered on a client (beautiful single mother named Alexis) that made $117k on one teleseminar call and how those in attendance could do the same. He talked about marrying offline and online marketing and how many of the top online marketers are also doing a lot offline even though they don’t tend to talk too much about that aspect. E-mail marketing is still effective although not as effective as it used to be–the key is to inject some of your own personality into the message.

Next up in the seminar was Joel Christopher who talked about “how to triple your online list and increase your profits in 99 days or less.” Joel is a super nice guy, and you could pick this up immediately during his presentation. A lot of SEO was touched upon throughout his presentation, and that made me feel validated that what we’re doing at SMB Consulting is high quality. Most of the recognized “gurus” preach many of the same things we’re doing.

My rhetorical question to myself after Joel and Dave’s presentations was “why am I not up there telling people how to do many of these same things?” So look for some of that in upcoming weeks–it’s time to get out there and kick some knowledge around.

Next up was Bill Walsh, not the deceased former football coach, and he really had a high quality presentation. Bill is a genuinely good guy who ended up buying us dinner later in the evening, but I digress. He imparted that we must have belief in our vision when nobody else does–how true! He also talked about the importance of having high quality materials for marketing (including suggesting visiting http://pkgraphics.com). “Always map out tomorrow, today” was one of Bill’s quotes and part of what he deems the “daily method of operation” or your DMO. Some other things Bill talked about (and I’m purposely being as brief as possible) included social networking, SEO, media relations, marketing plans, magazine ads (visit http://mediabids.com), and ask for the REM slots when trying to find low budget television and radio advertising spots.

Bill also talked about investing in your mind with daily positive content; starting a mastermind group (something I’m planning to do upon returning from Sedona); read books; attend workshops (if for no other reason, like minded people will be there). Also–surround yourself with successful people; always strive to provide 10X the value; perception is projection; auto-pay your favorite charity.

To wrap up the day, 14 time (something crazy like that) bestselling author Barbara DeAngelis spoke to the group. This was one of the most powerful speeches of the day, and it really seemed to move a lot of people within the group including me.

Admitted pigheaded stance pre-speech: I had to remind myself to open my mind because I was prejudging Barbara based on her “Men Are from Mars, Women are from Venus” work with Dr. Gray because their relationship didn’t workout so it always seemed rather hypocritical even though that’s a dumb and narrow view on things. The advice and how to apply it matters more than the source, and I got over my stupidity very quickly into her talk.

Barbara is a dynamic speaker that has a message that will truly impact you if your mind is open and in the right place. She talked about how “the time is now,” and we’re seizing it. Many of the group has been experiencing what she calls “divine discomfort” where you know you’re supposed to be doing more, but you’re not quite sure what it is. Or maybe you have internally realized what it is you’re supposed to be doing, but breaking free to accomplish it is messing with you. We need to surrender control and let go–we’ll figure it out as we go. “You’re being prepared for greatness” Barbara told the group, and I’ve felt like this has been happening to me personally for about six-eight months now. Something internally is going on that I cannot explain, but I feel as though my life finally has purpose and I’m on a path to something tremendous. Barbara also said something I’ve found myself saying lately in that sometimes “we need to get out of our own way.” Amen!

This has been one very interesting day in beautiful Sedona. I am not sure what will come of me upon returning home, but I don’t believe I’ll be 100% the same. This has already been an incredibly enlightening experience. I can’t wait to see what Day 2 brings!

Expressing value in your sales and marketing messages can be a huge challenge for many organizations.More often than not, our own needs and focus working IN the business vs. ON the business overwhelms us to spread messages that are self serving and not customer centric.My guest, Michael Nick, will talk about ways you can express true customer value in your messages in an objective manner to better serve your customers.

During the show, you will learn such things as:

Establishing measurable goals

Developing “why buy” calls to action

The 5 rules for creating effective business issue statements

Crafting realistic ROI metrics

Discovering true customer needs and attaching a value to those needs

You don’t want to miss this show!Tune in Thursday at 2 PM ET (11 AM PT) for another power packed marketing hour on “The Bauer Pauer Hauer.”

Increasing sales is a goal of just about every single company out there today but far too many don’t know how to grow their sales effectively.

My guest 10/18/07, Michael Boylan, author of “Accelerants” and “The Power to Get In,” will share ways you can grow your company as a sales representative, marketer and/or a business owner including how to:

Identify and gain access to the real decision makers faster and more effectively

More accurately assess and scope the likelihood of each opportunity’s probability to close earlier in your courting process

Compress closing cycles and reduce your cost of sales by up to 25 percent

To join us for the show live @ 2 PM ET (11 AM PT), please visit The Bauer Pauer Hauer. If you’d like to call in and ask a question, the number is 866-472-5790. To have a question answered (on or off air), please e-mail radio@smbconsultinginc.com, and I will see to it you get your question(s) answered.